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by Dr. Granville Dharmawardena

In the emerging world scenario holding on to political power essentially needs maintaining economic momentum and making opportunities to participate in that economic process available to all. Holding onto the dual responsibility of market management and political power is no longer possible

The recently concluded election clearly indicates that a vast majority of Sri Lankan voters are intelligent and wish to remain up to date in keeping with modern global trends.

After a long period of suffering as a result of being lured by defeatist ideologies, bungling of the economy, never ending war, destructive politicization of administration, law and order, and massive scale corruption in every sector, people who have realized how they have been fooled voted this time for the purpose of putting the nation in the correct track towards economic prosperity.

During the last half-century Sri Lanka not only remained a poor third world country, but also its economic standing with respect to the other third world countries deteriorated drastically. During this period the Western countries were united in waging a cold war against the socialist block against the spread of communism. The cold war that resulted from the western unity was fought for nearly half a century between the West and the Soviet block.

Now the cold war is over and it is said that the real winners of the cold war are the Chinese. The losers, other than the communist countries, are the bystanders like Sri Lanka some of whose leaders got blinded by the impractical ideals of socialism, ran behind a mirage dragging the nation with them and dragged the nation's economy along a destructive path.

With the cold war out of the way, the world is now driven by economic forces and not by political ideologies. Many senior politicians find it difficult to assimilate this reality. Russia would not have been in the present sorry plight if Gorbachev realized this when he was in power. His successor let the rudder snap and allowed the nation to go where it drifted. The Chinese leaders realized well on time that, in the count down to the 21st century, it would not be possible to control or suppress economic forces and also remain in political.

In the emerging world scenario holding on to political power essentially needs maintaining economic momentum and making opportunities to participate in that economic process available to all. Holding onto the dual responsibility of market management and political power is no longer possible. In a society where the individual is a lot empowered by modern technology, meaningless news censorships and artificial local denting of otherwise global market forces using political power brings about instability.

Independent

John Naisbitt points out that the emerging world will not be a world of the elite as in the past. It will not be a world of the scientist or the politician or the bureaucrat. It will be a world of millions of small men wielding the tools of modern technology and carrying with them some productive power. Multinationals are likely to be federations of such small, but clever independent men.

Chinese leaders realized this fact and let go economic power and market management to the hands of the entrepreneurs. They decided to hold on only to political power and even allow communism to take on capitalistic overtones. They realized that trade liberalization, a global force let lose by modern technology, and strong leadership that does not command the economy but cause it to grow bottom up through entrepreneurs are key ingredients to success.

They were extremely successful. The leaders of Vietnam's communist party seem to be emulating the Chinese. In the emerging global scenario world economics will be dominated by inter company trade and person to person communication more than by government to government channels.

One of the most important developments that are happening in the world today is the modernization of Asia. This single factor together with the Information Technology revolution will determine the shape of the world as we get along with the 21st century.

Trend

Throughout the last century the global trend was that everything revolved around the west. Japan was run by western rules during her economic emergence. By the turn of the century Asia had come of age. Now the centre of gravity of economic, political and cultural dominance is shifting in the direction of Asia. This is already raising fears among the Europeans. They are questioning where their leaders like Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle have gone.

They are repeatedly getting the answer that Churchill and de Gaulle are there, but their new names are Lee Quan Yew and Mahathir Mohamed. Although some Asian countries that had western sponsorship had already become economic tigers before the 1990s, the rise of Asia as a general phenomenon started in the 1990s.

Now indications of Asian renaissance are seen everywhere. Cricket is one good example. In the mid 20th century when we were listening to Australia vs England cricket matches and even taking sides, could anyone of us even have dreamt of the prospect of an Asian country ever becoming the world champion in cricket? But by the turn of the century all three Asian cricketing nations had become world cricket champions.

Westernization

Modernization of Asia should not be viewed as westernization of Asia as it happened in the past. Urbanization of certain Asian cities during the last few decades took place like that because the dominant region in the world at that time was the west. Asia's modernization as we move along the 21st century is happening along with the shift of global dominance towards Asia and therefore there is no imitation of the west.

Asia is modernizing in the Asian way preserving Asian traditions and culture. Asians are now proud of being called Asians. They refer to the 21st century as the Asia Pacific Century and the Chinese call it the Dragon Century.

The Chinese without doubt are going to be the most dominant race on earth as we get along with new century that has dawned. It is quite a change from the time when Asians referred to their mother tongues as vernaculars or the servant's languages. In the 1960s Europeans used to all themselves as English, French, German etc. After the 1960s they started to call themselves Europeans. This same phenomenon is now taking place in Asia particularly in the ASEAN countries where economies grew quite fast.

An Indonesian of the new generation would call himself Asian rather than Indonesian. In Sri Lanka we have not yet felt this trend.

Advantages

One of the advantages that are beneficial to the Asian countries in their economies is the anti-welfare mentality of Asian people. Asian families look after themselves. No one would want a government involved in his or her family life. Old and weak are looked after by the others in the family. They believe that strong family ties keep such evils as crime, out of wedlock children, divorce rates, loss of self-reliance and lower academic achievement under control.

For this reason, the governments of Asian countries are free of expensive social security systems and other manifestations of welfare states. In the west governments are burdened with such expenditure and such expenditure withers away their global competitiveness. In addition Asian workers are prepared to work longer hours than their counterparts in the west. In some Asian countries trade unions are trying to imitate the disadvantageous practices of the west and nullify such advantages rather than exploit them, thereby driving away investment and development.

Transform

Early 21st century is a very important period for the whole of Asia. Modern technology is going to transform and shrink the world while at the same time economic, political and cultural dominance is shifting towards Asia, almost forcing every country in the region to grow. Asians are beginning to feel proud of their identity as Asians. Nearly all Asian countries are going to tune their antennas to be receptive to the windfall of Asian growth and go fast towards NIC (Newly Industralized Country) status. Countries in the Far East are very quick at tuning their antennas.

China, which one may say, has the largest moment of inertia and therefore the difficulty to change has nevertheless been very fast in shedding dud baggage and outdated ideologies and quickly achieving precise tuning. This is a great tribute to the Chinese leaders who are members of the senior generation, who nevertheless were intelligent enough to be guided by future requirements and not by past experiences and outdated ideologies.

Opportunity

Sri Lanka has a great opportunity to grow fast to NIC status after pushing the LTTE back into history and Sri Lanka must now concentrate all her efforts towards achieving this objective. She will have to get an education system on line, increase science and technology expenditure to over 1.0% of the GDP and make enough energy available at competitive prices. She must get the essential basic infrastructure in place as soon as possible.

She should exploit every possible means of supplying power, telecommunication and transport services at the lowest possible prices. The services of these sectors must be made available at the lowest possible prices in order to catalyze other sectors to grow and generate profits. Every tariff increase in these sectors delivers a blow at economic growth.

It is very essential that the Government engages the most competent professionals available to maintain these sectors as efficient as possible and provide services as cheap as possible. A traffic increase must be equated with incompetence of the management.

Singapore got a Lee Quan Yew immediately after gaining independence. We in Sri Lanka have been suffering for 54 years and now we seem to have got a Lee Quan Yew at the helm. It is to strengthen his hands to bring about peace and drive us towards economic prosperity that the people of Sri Lanka have voted on the March 20, 2002.

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Copyright 2001 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.
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